10 ms·

Why go out?

• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• cpfohl 14y ago
  What a horribly sad way to live your life. People are no addiction, they're a necessary (and awesome) part of life. Regardless of your spiritual bent: Athiesm - We evolved from social primates into other social primates. You're adding a lot of psychological stress at a fundamental level when you don't live the way you're bred. Christianity/Judaism - God made us for community. "It is not good for Man to be alone". Budhhism - Everything is interconnected, including other people. Sikhism - All mankind is a universal brotherhood. Shall I continue?
  • _hiss 14y ago
    Read to the end and you'll find a more precisely stated version of this in her conclusion.
    • nollidge 14y ago
      The problem is that she just sort of smacks into that conclusion. Like it was just getting too depressing, so she tacked on a happy ending sitcom-style.
      • schiffern 14y ago
        I think it was intentional. The point of the article is not to hold your hand and guide you out of the forest, but to snap her fingers and make it dissolve. Perspective is often sudden.
        • saraid216 14y ago
          This. Her conclusion was emotional, not intellectual. I'm fairly confident that was intentional.
  • sp332 14y ago
    Regardless of your spiritual bent... except for every religion that has solitary monks, or hermits, or walkabouts, etc.
    • sophacles 14y ago
      Who are considered holy not because they aren't social, but because they are rejecting something fundamentally human in the name of $diety.
      • pnathan 14y ago
        I read an article by an East Orthodox priest once - evidently the idea was the hermit life was popular for wrestling with the Self and for the pursuit of reflection and personal betterment.
      • Volpe 14y ago
        A number of schools of buddhism hold no 'diety', yet still have monks who isolate themselves.
        • zikzikzik 14y ago
          Skim milk is diety.
  • hobin 14y ago
    How about, "do what makes you happy?" It's true that for the great majority of people, going out and having a ton of social relationships correlates with increased happiness. For me, not so much. I'm a very happy and optimistic person, yet I don't go out (here meaning social stuff besides the usual seeing and talking to a few friends, talking with colleagues, etc) more than twice a month. And that's actually a lot for me. This does not mean that I don't enjoy socializing now and then - I do. But I can say from personal experience that it is definitely NOT a necessity for me. I've sometimes done so for several months at a time, and have not noticed any side-effects.
  • icebraining 14y ago
    As an atheist, I dislike such "spiritual bents" being forced into the concept. In no way does Atheism entail a belief* in evolution. It is merely a lack of belief in any god(s). Also, your argument implies that every atheist views sex-change operation as necessarily bad, since they're a fundamental modification to "the way you're bred". This is certainly not true. I find your argument uncompelling. *Not to be confused with faith.
    • dr42 14y ago
      While the dictionary doesn't define atheism as holding a belief in evolution, I would suspect there is an extremely high correlation between them. It's always the religious fundamentalists that reject evolution because anyone with any kind of scientific mind would accept the mountains of evidence. If one rejects the spiritual or mythological explanation for things being the way they are, it's hard to come up with another possibility. Evolution or creationism, but I seldom hear of a third theory. There are of course many threads of opinion within the basic umbrella of evolution. If god didn't plant all those bones to make it look like evolution then who did?
      • alexro 14y ago
        If it wasn't God who created the Universe than who did? It created itself somewhere? That's where any rational mind should stop shouldn't it? We perceive the things in some way, which doesn't mean it is the right way or the only way.
        • dr42 14y ago
          I'm not sure I follow you. Or rather I follow what you're saying, but don't see how it relates to my comment in any way. I don't think a rational mind should just stop and give up trying to explain things. I believe in science, which is why I believe in evolution, or rather the evidence for it.
          • alexro 14y ago
            What I'm saying is evolution as we see it is part of a bigger picture, and the Universe can be part of something bigger. You trying to describe the elephant just looking at it's ear.
  • mhartl 14y ago
    People differ greatly in their appetite for social interactions vs. solitude. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. —Henry David Thoreau Do you agree with Thoreau? Probably not. But some people do, and there's nothing wrong with that.
    • presidentender 14y ago
      Thoreau didn't agree with Thoreau. His hermitage was frequently interrupted by visits. Solitude is best when broken occasionally.
    • kstenerud 14y ago
      I do agree with the first part. I once spent an entire year alone in my apartment, never speaking to anyone and rarely even going outside except to get groceries and go to the family Christmas get-together. It was heaven, but it couldn't last because my money wouldn't last, and so I returned to the job force. My need for money outweighs the draining effect other people have on me. However, I can't speak to the second part because I don't understand "loneliness", since I've never felt it (at least I don't think I have).
      • zanny 14y ago
        Loneliness can be compared to other withdrawal symptoms. People that are used to and expect a lot of social interaction enter a negative mental state to being without it. When you don't find the social contact addicting, and do not engage in it much, you never are exposed to the "withdrawal" symptoms.
    • bgilroy26 14y ago
      I don't think the point of the parent comment contradicts what you are saying. Arguably those "introverted" folks tend to be the types who long for human beings to understand each other even more than "extroverted" people do. One of Thoreau's crowning achievements was his work on non violent resistance, which in practice is aimed at precisely the same target as the wishes the parent commenter lists.
  • lmm 14y ago
    >We evolved from social primates into other social primates. You're adding a lot of psychological stress at a fundamental level when you don't live the way you're bred Hardly. Few people choose to live in caves, and a life of doing so would probably be more stressful than normal, despite that it's what we're bred for. And I'm pretty sure going to a bar or a rock concert was never part of the ancestral environment. If you tried staying in, found it made you feel much more stressed and so switched to going out that would be one thing, but that's not the experience the author describes at all.
  • redwood 14y ago
    Did you not finish the article? She postulates that perhaps people are an addiction to be wary of but ultimately applauds them as a vital addiction to continue fostering...
• nerdfiles 14y ago
  I first simply want to address the smoking bit. _Something_ about smoking is habitual, or rather, not to see that a drug addiction could instantiate or engender a habit which itself re-enforces the addiction, might be the main problematic of 'quitting advice.' Rather, ignoring that cigarettes prompt a way of life only suggests to me that said advice treats an idealized person, or biological system, a model. We are not models. In my comment history I've noted that Juan Enriquez talks of 'living organisms,' not 'life.' Again here I wish to point out a semantic mix up. We are a mix where the advice is technically valid: we have a bio-logical imperative as an organism to reduce or differentiate carcinogen-affected cells, waste, etc. Our bodies do it and so basically we are duty bound to respect, or harmonize, with our more basic functions. 'Just quit' ignores the basic psychological component of smoking, even if that component cannot be exhaustively explained as habit. Habit has two primary forms, situational and dispositional. When we say, 'Just quit!' We suggest that the dispositional habit is indeed ficticious. It _is_ an addiction. Being internally compelled implies a form of determinism that the agent in truth has no basis for judgement. To suggest that one has such a habit implies a personal capability to predict the conclusion of one's own habit. That being said, one only admits to the internal rules which drugs instantiates within the biological system of the agent. To one must accept the imperative, should one say it is a habit of this sort. However, a situational habit is different, a more robust problem. At first prompt, we are forced to investigate all the various ways in which cigarette smoking enters public consciousness. To 'quit,' indeed, in similar fashion blocks any fruit that may be drawn from the situational benefits of a situational habit. I, for instance, often decline cigarettes from close friends where the situation prompts a longform discussion. Another friend has mentioned, in passing, "I don't trust anyone who does not smoke." Andy Clarke has been lauded for his smoker's style. I personally took rolling on as a Special Interest: I can roll a perfect cigarette, reliably, almost systematically. And if anyone ever asks me to do so, I religiously oblige. This is not an internal habit, but it makes sense to describe it as habtiual in _some_ sense. I might share in some activity with this person, call it 'smoking'. What I am not doing is romanticizing smoking. What I am suggesting is that 'cold turkey' advice should be replaced with descriptive or behavioral models which may lend to therapeutic or narrative models for therapy. 'Just quit' isn't diagnostic, and attempts to reduce the solution to smoking to our basic biological imperative. Fair. Also, easier said that done. -- So actually work to make this advice relevant. It's blindly proscriptive, where integration and therapy should accompany. I mean, may I just put it so prettily: "freedom from slavery"? Slavery isn't anything like a biological function of nature. When one quits cigarettes, one is avoiding something external to one's self. Slavery isn't some inevitable feature of, trade, or political systems, that one chooses or does not. The whole way of putting it, as freedom from slavery, does more harm than good. I think it misleading and sensationalist. Cigarettes are evolutionarily novel, indeed, but what still remains is that they are a feature of civilization, the mix of the raw forces of selection and human intelligence.
• drusenko 14y ago
  This article seems to be written from a completely different perspective than my own life experiences. Perhaps it is introvert vs. extrovert, or perhaps it is something else entirely. I was called an introvert all throughout high school because I was quiet. Everyone was certain of it. I knew I wasn't an introvert because I gain energy from being around other people. When I am alone, I get tired and depressed. When I am around a few others or in large groups, I am happy and gain energy. Probably the reason New York City has so much appeal to me.
  • jmduke 14y ago
    People have often wildly conflicting views on what it means to be an introvert. I subscribe to the definition that an introvert is someone who primarily derives validation and worth from himself, rather than external people or stimuli -- think staying late to solve a tough problem, rather than staying late to impress a boss. I'm definitely an extrovert, despite being relatively quiet and thriving in private situations. That being said, I still love 'going out' in the broad sense; our minds thrive on novelty, and people are definitely part of that.
    • StavrosK 14y ago
      I don't know why we have to bin people like that. I love staying in to program, or read, or whatever, but I need to go out a lot (every day, or more, if I can help it), because I love hanging out with friends, meeting new people, doing new things, etc. Intrinsic vs extrinsic validation doesn't really factor into it. I just like hanging out with friends and making new ones.
      • saraid216 14y ago
        We bin people like that because, before the bins, we just assumed there was one and that people who weren't in it were bad. Now we know there are two, and people might simply be in a different "good" rather than out in the "bad".
        • 14y ago
• brittohalloran 14y ago
  What I got from the article i. Childhood issues ii. Possible serious psychological disorder iii. Appreciation for my enjoyment of people
  • calinet6 14y ago
    This is the correct interpretation. Congratulations! I read the article and thought, "Wow, there are people like this?" I mean, I relate to a few of the issues, some social anxiety here and there, some wondering how I'm viewed in social groups, etc. But to this level? Let me make this perfectly clear: I have nothing against these kinds of people. Not in the least. I know a lot of you out there will relate to this article and that's perfectly fine. Good for you. But please, don't take it as some kind of validation or good advice. Be yourself, don't be a dick, stop worrying, get out and see the world, and live how you want to live. It is simply not as complicated as this author makes it out to be. The advice you could take from this article is, get help if you need it. Honestly. You can get past anxieties, social and otherwise, and sometimes there are things you shouldn't just accept as "who you are." You can always better yourself.
    • Sumaso 14y ago
      Really? I disagree, perhaps that's what the difference is between introvert and extrovert. I find that I need some time to myself, to do my own things, or else I get perturbed. For a while there in university I would spend even 2 or 3 day alone in my apartment, without speaking, texting, or IMing anyone. Just coding an assignment, playing video games or fooling around in Linux. Completely giving up people didn't see terribly insane at the time. Of course this is a moot point since I now attend a Unix group meetup every month and actually look forward to the social interaction.
      • calinet6 14y ago
        I am an I :) There's introversion (the natural preference/energy focus) and then there's verging on sociopathy (lack of empathy, inability to relate to others). I think the author is closer to the 2nd, but I don't really know. Just be aware that I fully understand introversion/extroversion and all the shades in-between. And still hold to my interpretation of the article...
• josiahq 14y ago
  “You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.” ― Philip Roth, American Pastoral
• Toucan 14y ago
  I first heard this (or an adaptation) on the CBC podcast Wiretap: http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap/episode/2012/05/04/hell-is-other-people/ http://www.cbc.ca/wiretap/episode/2012/05/04/hell-is-other-p... I'd recommend it if you enjoyed reading this, it often carries features of a similar calibre.
• Swizec 14y ago
  "Never mind, I replied, turning the key, for my curiosity surpassed my fear." And with that the author sums it up for me. I'm curious. I want to know. So I go out.
  • piaskal 14y ago
    It's so easy to access all kinds of information from home nowadays, it can be better at fulfilling my curiosity than going out.
    • bgilroy26 14y ago
      I think that is a key problem in the Internet age. I would argue that cigarettes were so powerful because they make social interaction easier. The Internet brings the cost of social interaction -- communion -- far lower than cigarettes ever did. Because it is so valuable to so many people, lowering the cost of communing can incentives some terrible things by accident.
    • antidoh 14y ago
      The you're not curious about the right things. Or probably more accurately, you're an exception. Humans are social animals.
• dtbx 14y ago
  I think she is a little bit neurotic, and she missed all the evolutionary stuff - that we are hardwired for social interaction. I live an overly solitary life, and I crave for company. My social circle is nearly empty, no GF, and almost all my friends have moved to other cities, so I have just one close friend. Damn, I need to go out. I need more human contact, not less.
  • keithpeter 14y ago
    Yup, get yourself out there, sharpish. Form/join another peer group. Is there a scifi writer's group in your location? Join it. If not, start one. If you work in tech, start some workshops on something mainstream in your local coffee shop/community centre ('blogging for charity workers' or 'podcasting for beginners' or something)
    • dtbx 14y ago
      Thanks, will do something about it. I must.
  • sukuriant 14y ago
    Read the whole article. That's what this person comes to at the end.
  • CamperBob2 14y ago
    In her case, she doesn't seem to have any neuroses that couldn't be fixed with perspective. Instead of brooding about a perceived insult from some experimental poet guy she met at a bar, she could try volunteering in any number of capacities, from neutral social/cultural organizations to civil libertarian causes to overt partisan activism. You can't look closely at the lives and roles of others without seeing your own in more detail. Somewhere in the Universe a supernova or a gamma-ray burst probably wiped out a dozen advanced civilizations between the time I typed 'Somewhere' and the time I typed 'typed.' Fretting over anything less is, by definition, sweating the small stuff.
    • scotty79 14y ago
• calydon 14y ago
  Mirrors are not the only way to gain insight from an externality - other people hold up mirrors we can't see. After the perceived slight from the conceptual poet, I would have pointed out that their question might not be a challenge or putdown but an invitation to a debate - best answered with another question. "Why would you think that your work is not intrinsically interesting to everyone?" etc. This insight did not and probably could not have come from within. And again, "whenever I go out into the world, whenever I get involved in a relationship, my idea of who I think I am utterly collides with the reality of who I actually am." That's at least one great reason to go out.
• 6ren 14y ago
  Life is suffering, so say the Buddhists. So they use similar reasoning not just for cigarettes (and masturbating and TV for that matter), but all desire, all attachment. And they are intellectually thorough about this: once you commit to this course, and look forward to the ceasing of all wants, you must release that desire also. Does this work? A Buddhist monk was measured to be the "happiest person in the world". Though, even if you can measure happiness, it may be more due to meditation, rather than Buddhist philosophy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthieu_Ricard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthieu_Ricard But, to be clear, they don't actually advocate giving up things - just giving up the desire/attachment to things. That's their "middle way", neither compulsive nor abstinent. (If I've misrepresented any of these, feel free to correct).
• AnthonBerg 14y ago
  Unusually well written.
  • yic2 14y ago
    Agreed -- unusually well written. A pleasure to read a logical analysis of sociological behavior. Except for the very end, which was disappointing.
    • AnthonBerg 14y ago
      Interesting - the end is love or hate. Me and a friend really liked it, another friend was pained to read it.
• roryokane 14y ago
  The author starts off with a nicely logical analysis of whether companionship is worth it, backed by anecdotal evidence from her life. I think she doesn’t give enough evidence for her conclusion that people don’t “provide satisfaction and relaxation” – she only mentioned one story, and didn’t describe any times when people were good – but at least she tries to base her decisions on evidence. And then at the end she says “perhaps our solitude is just saving up energy for companionship” – and then stops there, assuming that that first hypothesis is right (and concluding based on that assumption that being around people is worth it, after all). Where did all her logic go? She has given no evidence of any kind for that, unlike everything else she discussed before. She’s wasting her previous painstaking analysis by ending with an unsupported storybook, feel-good decision. That’s too bad; it makes this article significantly less useful as a guide to deciding whether going out is worth it in my case.
• deleted 14y ago
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• c0balt279 14y ago
  I don't wholly agree with the contents of the essay, but that was so delightfully well written! We have evolved to be social being. Being independent and content with yourself is a good thing, but total isolation can have disastrous effects on the human psyche (Look-up reports of POWs who were kept in isolation for extended periods of time).
  • ams6110 14y ago
    Prisoners are not in isolation by choice. It's uncommon, quite rare even, but I don't think you can deny that there are a few people who find happiness in solitude.
• Coatsworth 14y ago
  On a Night of Snow Cat, if you go outdoors you must walk in the snow. You will come back with little white shoes on your feet, Little white slippers of snow that have heels of sleet. Stay by the fire, my Cat. Lie still, do not go. See how the flames are leaping and hissing low, I will bring you a saucer of milk like a Marguerite, So white and smooth, so spherical and sweet-- Stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow. Outdoors the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night. Strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore; And more than cats move, lit by our eyes' green light, On silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar-- Mistress, there are portentas abroad of magic and might, And things that are yet to be done. Open the door!
  • waqf 14y ago
    The concept of this poem is not bad, but the writing is atrocious. Where did you get it?
• haberman 14y ago
  The author sounds like she suffers from crippling anxiety and possibly depression, and I am incredibly empathetic because I have lived through similar things. I can understand from personal experience how a person could come to the conclusions she does. But I hope that she manages to find the solution that frees her of this burden. Whether it's meds, lifestyle changes, or moving to a place that gets more sun, I want to believe that there is a solution out there for her. For me it was quitting drinking -- I never had a drinking problem in the traditional sense, but what I didn't realize was that it was making me emotionally very unstable. It's hell being the kind of person who spends weeks reacting to one mean comment. It is the worst thing ever. But living a life that's free of that is the best thing ever. It's worth doing whatever it takes to find out how to achieve it.
  • WiseWeasel 14y ago
    You might be projecting the putative "crippling anxiety" into her words. I think she was trying to write something worth reading, and so naturally dramatized her story a bit. I thought it was well-written, displaying a healthy level of self-observation and satisfying developmental progress for the length of the piece.
    • haberman 14y ago
      "But let me assure you, this conceptual poet was digging his nails into my heart—he knew it, and, five minutes later, I suddenly felt it too—which led to a week and a half of fuming in bed, unable to sleep, my declaring this man my enemy, the reconceiving of a magazine article I was writing in such a way as to include a subtextual layer that would annihilate conceptual poetics, a week and a half of going out every night and talking through the insult with each of my friends—what am I even saying? It took leaving the continent for the insult to finally recede into the background of my days, and for me to regain my equilibrium." --- "And then . . . I destroyed it. I met someone and then another person and before I knew it, all the chaos of life came back, along with all my self-doubt and anxiety and fear." This is not normal.
      • WiseWeasel 14y ago
• sopooneo 14y ago
  I am surprised at how often neurotic artists and writers seem to think others are like them. It's perfectly fine to feel the way this writer does, but does she realize it is unusual? Or does she assume others feel the same way but are just faking it? Lives of quiet desperation, etc?
• xefer 14y ago
  I don't think there's any desperation in her voice at all. She sounds genuinely bored with something she has plenty of - and no trouble getting - other people. To be honest she comes across as a rich person complaining about the shallowness of people seeking money.
• mattpru 14y ago
  Q: "Does anyone actually enjoy more than one party in six?" A: Yes.
• shabble 14y ago
  This is off-topic regarding the actual article, but has anyone else noticed the keyword stuffing spam in the page footer if javascript is disabled? I sent a quick email to the site contact address describing the problem, but I'm curious if anyone has any better ways of informing people about this sort of thing? I've tried a few times for different sites in the last few weeks, and I never hear back; I assume the words needed to describe the problem are themselves liable to get spamfiltered and so nobody even sees my mail. Or it looks like a phishing/scamming attempt itself (although I'd like to think with better spelling & grammar), and gets binned for that.
  • snapdata 14y ago
    I am amazed that you looked through the source code of the page. It seemed like a pretty bland/generic site to me, not worth checking out what's going on under the hood. Good find though.
    • shabble 14y ago
      Nah, I found it because I generally browse with Firefox + NoScript which disables most javascript, including the little snippet that this spamblob uses to hide itself with css. So it appeared black and bold in the middle of the page footer :)
      • snapdata 14y ago
        Ahh, haha. I'm using chrome :S We have a rip off of NoScript called 'ScriptNo'
• GigabyteCoin 14y ago
  I go out to enjoy the scenery, get exercise, interact with people, catch up on fashion, check up on prices, try new things, golf, hike, and just enjoy life in general. Unfortunately most all of those things listed above that I love cannot be done inside one's own home.
• schme 14y ago
  Back in high school I felt the same way. I couldn't understand why I went out. When I didn't I felt bad and as if I was doing something very unnatural. I come from a smallish town where everyone knew each other. After awhile I got to be known as the boy who didn't go out, which hurt. After a few years I got over it. I realized I didn't dislike going out per se, the people in the small town just weren't people I liked, we never 'clicked'. You can't like everyone and as I realized this I started going out and being with friends and doing all the stuff I had missed out on. It's not about being an extrovert or introvert, it's more about not understanding why other people and/or yourself put certain demands on yourself when you feel like something else. Nowadays I don't care about what I 'should' do or what I'm expected to do. Not doing something like going to someones birthday party has certain implications to people, but I understand where it's coming. Now I make a choice between the consequences of my actions, not because an abstract idea of having to do something.
• dsirijus 14y ago
  My best friend is a rabbit.